Subramanian Swamy

In the 1950s and 60s, the entire capitalist western world led by the United States of America was suffering from a paranoia of Communism. They still are. Actually this fear of the Communists in the US and Europe and their urgent desire to somehow wipe it out from the surface of the Earth commenced immediately after the 1917 October Revolution in the Soviet Union (now reverted back to Russian Republic in the post Communism era). Adolf Hitler capitalized immensely on this Anglo-Saxon paranoia of Communism because of which the entire Western world looked the other side and even aided the growth of Fascism and Adolf Hitler in Germany, supporting his party financially and in many other ways in the hope of wiping out Communism.

But Hitler’s devastation of the human civilization, did not deter the USA or Britain or the rest of Western Europe to work for obliteration of Communism, notwithstanding the fact that the Soviet Union and the rest of the Socialist Bloc, with the exception of the People’s Republic of China, was facing a lot of existential crisis of its own making. Post world war II as the new world started settling with several British and other European colonies in Asia and Africa released from bondage and gradually gaining independence, the emergent super power the US of A got into the business of defeating Communism through all kinds of means foul, but hardly fair, including overthrow of the progressive democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in early 1950s, through a CIA coup, killing of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, teaching him a deadly lesson for successfully gaining Congo’s independence from Belgian occupation, CIA patronage to General Suharto in Indonesia to overthrow popular nationalist leader Sukarno, sabotage of the efforts of the then Egyptian leader Gamel Abdel Nasser to forge a pan-Arab unity to fight off growing American-Israeli hegemony by propping up Wahabi Saudi King Abdul Aziz, Jordanian King Husain and successive Kuwaiti Emirs as well as the monarchs of the Gulf principalities. Later in the 1970s propping up General Mohammad Ziaul Haq in Pakistan and subtly participating in the judicial murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was all part of this pan Asia-Africa strategy against Soviet Union.

The US pushed and patronized Islam in a big way to counter and crush the growing nationalist and anti-imperialist sentiment, often tilting towards socialism, spreading across newly awakened Asia and Africa which haunted the western capitalist world in the cold war era. That fear persists to date, making the NATO powers, led by the US to create the Salafist, Wahabi Islam Frankenstein to somehow obliterate the last vestige of a secular nation in the Arabian peninsula, Syria.

All those elements, Osama Bin Laden and his extended family members were for long patronised by the USA, the UK and even other West European countries. As for India, since independence the western Bloc looked with suspicion, scepticism and distrust at India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru for his stubborn commitment to democracy and universal suffrage not granted even in the US till well after Nehru’s demise. Nehru’s refusal to fall into the lap of the NATO bloc, instead forging with Nasser, Yugoslavian President Josip Broz Tito and Sukarno a Non-aligned Bloc further strengthened that suspicion.

The counter to Nehru’s progressive policies could only be “Religion.” And in India, it had to be Hindutva. The RSS, the stridently right wing Hindu majoritarian organization, swearing by the establishment of Hindu Rashtra was naturally the best foil against Nehru’s attempt to establish secular, democracy in India.

So just as all kinds of dubious Muslims thrived and prospered to establish their institutions, madrasas, masjids and such other symbols of their distinct religious identity in their native land as well as in the West, the Sangh, Sanghis and Sanghi outfits too received similar patronage in the West, never mind their academic merit. Doesn’t Swamy an early discovery of the RSS fall in the same category? And Swamy has the cheek to dub anyone he dislikes as CIA agent. His diplomacy over the last decades, by his own admission has been to promote the cause of USA. In his book, ‘Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi: Unanswered Questions and Unasked Queries,’ he says how patiently he explained the American mind to Rajiv Gandhi, implicitly asking him not to mess too much with that super power. This was in the context of Rajiv Gandhi’s world tour just before his death, to mobilise support against the first US invasion of Iraq in 1990, while Swamy was the country’s Law minister.

He also wrote how the then Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar pleaded with him to intercede and ask the US not to refuel from Indian airports to prevent his political adversaries from making a political capital out of this and the Americans listened to Swamy, he surmised for after that the American planes ceased to refuel from India.

Swamy also mentioned in the same book his close fraternal relations with the then Pakistan President General Mohammad Ziaul Haq, the father of Jihadi Islam and well established CIA pawn. He wrote how he frequently flew to China. For what? If not acting as the US messenger in those years when US was mending fences with China?

Ajaz Ashraf in his column in the Scroll.in has said that Swamy was unfairly labeled as a CIA agent. Was the Congress charge against Swamy so unfair? This process of US patronage of Sanghi elements increased manifold since 1966 when Indira Gandhi became India’s Prime Minister for she, unlike her father, was also combative against US attempt to dominate the world and post liberation of Bangladesh, a singular achievement of Indira Gandhi, the US became paranoid of Indira. Consequently the US Ambassador in Delhi was sitting ready with his Seal to stamp a Visa on any Sanghi abusing Indira. Subramanian Swamy happened to be one such beneficiary.

It is beyond my intellect to assess or comment on his academic merit or his grasp of Economics. But his CV itself says he studied Mathematics at Delhi University, then Statistics at the Indian Statistical Institute at Calcutta attempting to inherit his statistician father’s legacy. But then went to Harvard and was awarded a PhD in Economics. I reiterate that I am not qualified to comment on the academic merit of his PhD. So I won’t.

But it defies logic that a PhD from Harvard, who has to his credit as many as 20 books so far of which the eighth was on Rajiv’s assassination, plagiarized a whole page from fellow Tamilian K Mohandas’ article in Indian Defence Review (IDR), regarding the supposed suicide of smuggler Shanmugham one of the star catch for probing the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, under the watch of the CBI-SIT. Mohandas first wrote a piece in IDR in 1993 debunking the CBI claim and virtually accusing the SIT of murdering Shanmugham. Swamy lifted from there word for word, without changing comma or full stop and without acknowledging that this is a direct lift from Mohandas’ piece. (Mohandas was dead by the time Swamy published his book in the year 2000). Now if that is not plagiarism what is it? And after that how do we trust Swamy’s academic claims?

This is just to mention that the man who goes around questioning everybody’s integrity is hardly above suspicion, even on his much touted academic achievements. Actually he fits the Bill of the RSS. The Sanghis for all their supposed disdain and aversion to the Western ways and English language are immediately taken in the moment they find amongst them anyone fluent in spoken English, from L K Advani, to M L Sondhi, to Subramanian Swamy to Arun Shourie to Ram Jethmalani, to Shanti Bhushan, to our very own Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, the moment they discover any English speaking person subscribing to their narrow sectarian world view, they immediately embrace him and go all out to promote such a person and praise him sky high, proving the tremendous dearth of real talent among the Nicker wallas. In one of his candid moments Jaitely, upset over re-induction of Ram Jethamalani into the BJP as a Rajya Sabha member way back in 2010 for the fourth time, made this confession without naming any individual. That was also the time he was having a running feud with another of his English speaking old pals Arun Shourie.

In his book on Rajiv Gandhi, Swamy, who hated among others, late Congress leader Arjun Singh wrote how most Congress leaders warned Rajiv Gandhi to keep away from Swamy, but Rajiv was taken in by Swamy only because in Rajiv’s assessment Swamy was equal to a hundred MPs when it came to attacking the rivals. There it was V P Singh whom Rajiv had started despising and loved Swamy for making all kinds of blatantly false allegations in the House against the then Prime Minister. Again we learn from Swamy in the same book how he pronounced V P Singh in a specially convened press conference a CIA agent on the strength of some forged papers. The news, said Swamy was prominently carried the next day in the Hindustan Times. He of course blamed the forgery later on former Chief Election Commissioner T N Seshan. So two things are apparent there. One Swamy would not hesitate accusing anyone of anything, without a shred of evidence and two he is ready to offer his services to whoever is ready to pay for it, in kind as is evident from his membership of the Rajya Sabha. We won’t discuss cash here for there is no hard evidence except for hearsay. He loaned his services to Rajiv hoping that Rajiv would make him and not Chandra Shekhar the Prime Minister and Rajiv almost did this. Again all this is in his book.

Now the one person the RSS, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP and the hoi polloi of this country hated and continue to hate most is Sonia Gandhi, from Sanghis on social media using dirty expletives against her, calling her a woman of easy virtue to accusing her of looting the country to doing back seat driving for ten years of UPA rule, they have spared no abuse against her. The real reason of course is very different as is evident from Tavleen Singh, Sir Meghnad Desai and Surjit Bhallas lamentations and not to miss Modi himself and Vasundhara Raje who all disdainfully attacked Sonia for bringing in MNREGA which made a substantial difference to the lives of the rural poor, for bringing in the RTI, the right to education and right to food Bill despite resistance from many of her partymen and allies including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sharad Pawar who resisted till the end the Congress bid to push right to food bill.

Swamy who had been in wilderness for years, was discreetly drafted into the hate Sonia campaign by none other than K N Govindacharya half way through the UPA government and the Sangh and Modi immediately embraced him for throwing all the filth at Sonia. Never mind that in 1999 after defeating Vajpayee government by one vote, Swamy together with his then mentor J Jayalaltihaa had no hesitation in offering to form a Government at the Centre under Sonia’s leadership as long as Swamy was also made a minister in her cabinet. Swamy said in the same book how he organized an evening tea meeting between Sonia and Jayalalithaa for this purpose.

Sadly for poor Govind, he is still in the woods, while Modi, whom he never liked, is the country’s prime minister and Swamy is an honourable member of the Rajya Sabha. But there is one admirable quality Swamy has. He is unrelenting in his pursuits and one of them is to become India’s Finance Minister, an ambition he has nursed since 1977 when he first got elected to the Lok Sabha from Bombay as a Janata Party member and hoped that he, a Harvardian would be the natural choice of Morarji Desai but Morarji chose H M Patel instead.

Then he worked hard with Chandra Shekhar to bring down V P Singh government by engineering defections but while according to him Seshan spoiled his chances of becoming the Prime Minister of India with Rajiv Gandhi support, Dhirubhai Ambani conspired to put his man Yeshwant Sinha in the North Block. Mind you, Swamy wrote all this.

Then in 1999 Swamy blamed Arjun Singh for scuttling the chances of an alternate government led by Sonia where he was aspiring to head directly to the North Block. So now that he has succeeded through Herculean effort to become a BJP MP, the next step is skip over to the Raisina Hill. But that requires getting rid of Arun Jaitley. So Swamy’s real targets are not Raghuram Rajan or Arvind Subramanian or Shaktikant Das. It is one and only Jaitley. Curiously there is some kinship between Jaitely and Swamy. Swamy’s wife Roxanna is the elder sister of former Indian Express Editor Coomi Kapoor whose husband and Free Press Journal Lifetime Editor Virendra Kapoor and Jaitely are closest friends since the pre-emergency days when Jaitely was a Delhi University ABVP leader and Kapoor also of the Sanghi fraternity, along with Coomi was a reporter with Motherland, brought out by Jana Sangh with K R Malkhani as its Editor.

They say Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. It should perhaps read a Swamy scorned. When Swamy started his campaign against Jaitely he obviously got hints of encouragement from the powers that be and in this case these could only be two, one the Prime Minister himself and the other the Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamasevak Sangh (RSS), Mohanrao Bhagwat. Bhagwat’s disdain for the D-4, led by Jaitely is an open secret and as for the Prime Minister, quite obviously he winked the other side when Swamy started targeting Rajan, even Jaitely was complicit in that. But now Modi has rapped, though only slightly, Swamy on the knuckles and with the Cabinet expansion over, there is no chance of Swamy becoming India’s Finance Minister at least in the near future. So then he has now turned to Ayodhya and Ram Mandir, as he stated in his tweets. Which means, by the time the UP Assembly elections come, he would have raised the spectre of Ram Mandir, to force Modi to take a position. That may earn him brownie points from many Sanghis who may ultimately force Modi to get rid of Jaitely and make Swamy the Finance minister or perhaps get rid of Modi and make Swamy the Prime Minister of India. After all he is promising to build Ram Mandir on the disputed site. So watch out Modiji, you are next on Swamy’s firing line.

Frankly, I don’t get the connection. What’s killing snakes in Pakistan to do with poor Subramanian Swamy? Are you trying to imply he is a snake. I dare say that’s a bit unfair on this Harvardian doctor.

Ha, your knowledge of history is so poor. You don’t know that Islam arrived in Kerala during Prophet Mohammad lifetime. It came to Northwest India many centuries later. But for all this you have to read history and disabuse your mind of Sanghi disinformation. Do read. It will do you some good.